Thursday, May 27, 2010

Addiction

Hi I update real quick can't talk must sleep so I can wake up and work and knit and FINISH READING WHEEL OF TIME it has taken over all in case anyone's been wondering where I've been for two weeks it rules life aaack but it is SO GOOD and SOOOO LOOOONG must leave now promise real blog post soon kthxbye *collapse*.

(Note to self: Iced Tea + Facebook + Looming Bedtime = FAIL.)

Monday, May 10, 2010

Believe Me I Am Still Alive

.... But there is no cake, alas. I suppose it's even a lie.

This is merely a brief reminder to myself that there is a world outside this puddle of angst that is the inside of my head; it does good to step outside and take a breather now and then. Between a sick child, a sick husband, half the people I trained at work now being promoted to positions ahead of me, and being totally broke on top of everything else, I've been wallowing in a bit of self-pity for the last couple of weeks.

Then I talked to my father-in-law last night- he ascribes to the meditative, Zen-like philosophy of "Screw It." Sounds good to me- I fell asleep early and slept like a log (even if my dreams were trippy.) To quote those yuppie t-shirts I've been seeing everywhere, life is good. Everyone's more or less recovered from the Jovian Sickness, and I can tolerate the promotions if I find out they have good reason (i.e. "[insert name] asked nicely and you weren't here" or "[insert name] screws up guest services so much we figured they'd be safer just giving people change" or "actually, the STL is grooming you for some bizarre sales floor position, where you're happier half the time anyway. Anyway, I digress.) I acknowledge that maybe these people are even better than me (though one of them has worked there for six freaking months, that's what's pissing me off more than anything) .... but if they're more competent than me for whatever reason, I want to hear it straight out, told to my face by a lifeform at least resembling homo sapiens. And I want an honest reason- "Budget cuts", or "The DTL caught you juggling one night and now he thinks you suck", or "you went through that three-month phase where you were, like, never on time." (Actually, that's probably all true.) The point is, I just want someone to talk to me. Big-girl talk; no dithering. "Mmm, yes, well, you see here..." is just going to aggravate me. I was in the Army; if you want to look me in the eye and say "We didn't promote you because you're a fucking moron", then I will nod calmly and say "Okay." I can handle it. Somebody just talk to me.

Wait a minute- a long rambling paragraph I didn't intend to write? Lots of whinging [sic] and moaning? Over-use of italics (and parentheses)* and at least one f-bomb? And (perhaps most importantly) a vague loss of coherency near the end?

By Jove, I just wrote my first rant, didn't I? I feel like I've broken some kind of blog cherry. Now all I need is a "Hundred Things About Me" list and a million pictures of my cat. Sigh. (I do feel better though.)

Life isn't all that bad- Uncle Cleve is starting to look up, I've got a fair spot of knitting done lately, and I now own a rocking chair. The Other Other Nerd is doing the dishes as a belated Mother's Day treat; this pleases me. Perhaps, if I play my cards right, I can even get cake- it will not be a lie. That is all now.

*See what I did there? Ha ha, hahaha. Hahahahaha. [Clears throat.]

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Death of Personality

If anyone works with me and thinks I've been acting a bit odd lately- well, you're not alone. I think I've been acting odd lately. Last night I think it finally hit me why, and turned me into a complete space case for a good hour and a half. My managers, oddly enough, didn't seem too bothered; I guess they're so used to me being overly perky that the sight of me being overly... un-perky (that's a word now) was, well, startling but not far-fetched. Now here I am, it's six-thirty in the morning and I only went to bed around one, I am definitely going to try and get back to sleep but first I need to type this.

(I'm in Wordpad right now, so I can check myself several times before I hit "post". I don't want to turn into one of those "pain is joy" type bloggers; I just think I'm sort of justified at the moment.)

My uncle has a brain fungus. Seriously. I thought my mother was pulling my leg when she first told me; there is an old family joke about the "terrible dreaded creeping corroded fogus mungus fungus (among us)". The thing is, there apparently really is a creeping corroded fungus among us; there are a lot of them, actually. We breathe them in all the time, and the vast majority of us will never even be aware of it, let alone be affected by it. Unfortunately, my uncle is diabetic and was unaware of it at the time; diabetes suppresses your immune system, and his body was unable to fight off the spores and contracted one of the worst fungi you can get, mucormycosis. (Warning: not a pleasant article to read.) By the time they got it, the stuff had spread up his right nostril into his entire right eye structure, a good deal of the right side of his brain, and was threatening his cerebellum and brain stem.

Now, anyone who knows my uncle knows that he's... well, he's a lot like me. Probably the most like me of anyone in the family in many regards: he's goofy and fun-loving, hangs out between chaotic good and chaotic neutral on the alignment spectrum, and is the most stubborn bastard out there when he has to be. (He's been compared to comedian Lewis Black several times; he even looks like him.) And what does a stubborn bastard-type do when they get a disease with (I'm not kidding, read the article) a 30-90% mortality rate? Survive, of course.

It's taken a lot. They had to take out his entire eye structure- the right eye and its optic nerve, the orbit (that's the technical term for the skull's eye socket, more or less), and gobs of surrounding tissue. A good deal of the right frontal lobe had to be taken out too. They've got him in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and they're giving him this $1,000-a-bag Drug From Hell that will hopefully clear out the last of the spores but could very well destroy his kidneys in the process- and he's got the diabetes that started the problem on top of everything else.

You might be going "Well, hey, he's alive, right? That's the important thing." And I suppose you're more or less right.... but read that last paragraph again. Right frontal lobe... taken out. Just reading that makes me want to vomit. From what my father told me, the specific areas taken out are centers for memory and personality; I've been researching a little myself, and it seems that the area surrounding the orbit is related to decision-making and long-term planning and drive. Higher-functioning, makes-us-human good stuff. And they pulled it out. Specifics aside, I asked my father if Uncle Cleve was still... Uncle Cleve, and he said "no."

My uncle has been lobotomized. Maybe not literally; maybe I shouldn't even be calling it, it's the wrong medical term or something- but that's what it sounds like to me. For a person like me, with my brain as the only thing going for me (and even that called into question on a daily basis), I think that just might be the ultimate nightmare right there. And what am I supposed to do, rail against the doctors that just saved his life? Au contraire, I am eternally grateful to them for their willingness to do anything to save him. But it's still real hard. This comes right after my grandmother's fairly recent diagnosis of Alzheimer's, too; that one scares me too, since it seems to run in the family. So does diabetes, it turns out. Between one thing and another, how long until it's my turn for a death of personality?

A frequent theme in science fiction is the "death of personality"; for example, on the '90's show Babylon Five it was used as a capital punishment. A telepath wipes out your old personality, and then establishes a new one for you and turns you into a productive member of society. It seems like a good idea at first- keeps both the liberals and conservatives happy. Now, though, I feel like my family is being punished by death of personality- and they didn't do anything. That horrible little voice in the back of my head sometimes thinks that it would be a lot easier to lose my loved ones if they just died like normal folk; I keep punching her down, but she pops up again. I can't help it; I'm only human. And then there is the great eternal whatever-you-wanna-call-it, hope. Uncle Cleve still has a lot of recovery to do; maybe he'll turn out alright. Some people walk away from frontal lobe damage with nothing more than OCD or schizophrenia (neither of which are as bad as Hollywood makes them out to be, and both highly treatable). Others obviously don't; anyone who's read or seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest knows that. I don't know for sure; if anything really bad happens, then Mom says she'll get me out to Denver somehow, but otherwise I'm going by my parent's communications.

I've mostly been stressed out about this at work; I couldn't for the life of me figure out why work was suddenly so stressful, and then it hit me last night. My parent's house in Denver is right down the road from a Target; I've always associated the two, though it was mostly subconscious before now. Believe it or not, the fact that I work there has little to do with anything at all- it simply means that I spend a lot of time there (Captain Obvious, sorry) and triggers that connection. This has been going on for a few months now, during which I feel I haven't quite been myself in the workplace- I do believe the two are connected, if in a rather bizarre way. This has led to a few other thoughts about my life in general, but I'll save them for some other time; this is starting to get long. If you're reading this, thanks for letting me vent or rant or confide or whatever you want to call it. If nobody reads this, at least writing it made me feel a little.... better? I don't know. I'm a human, and we're a confusing bunch.

Friday, April 16, 2010

I Don't Know What to Title This

Everyone who gets hired at the certain bullseye-decorated retail establishment I work for goes through orientation; this is normal of most jobs. During the orientation, the subject of "walkie ettiquette" is brought up, and can essentially be summed up as this:

1. No swearing.

2. No babbling about your pet gerbil or whatever.

3. Keep sensitive or security-related topics to the phone lines, or personal chatter.

... And then there was one of my previous employers, the United States Army; we all used to say that if there was a rule against something, it was because someone had already done it.

So under this logic, do certain retail establishments need to impose rules about discussing fictional alien sex on the walkie?

(In case anyone high on said establishment's food chain is reading this, this took place after business hours. You can breathe again now.)

(Alas, this is a "noodle incident" from my husband, I wasn't working at the time. I'm trying to talk him into getting his own blog; see why he needs one now?)

On another note: Car batteries. Are trying. To SCREW with my MIND. That is all.

(P.S. Yes I am aware that I meant to write "elude" instead of "allude" in my previous post. You know who you are.)

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Karma, Fear, and Optimism

Okay, I must have done something fabulous recently that is alluding my memory, since people keep giving me free yarn. Seriously. First, the wonderful teachers at Nicholas' school sent him home with this:
See that? That's a whole bag of yarn. I swoon every time I see it.

Then, at knit night at Ewe'll Love It, I manage to win the boobie prize in a scavenger hunt. (it's always funny to think that you can indeed win something through sheer incompetence. Yay!) I am now the proud owner of this guy:



Again, very lucky.


Mind you, all the free yarn in the world might not do me any good if I am going insane, which is a distinct possibility. If you don't believe me, observe this monstrosity.


"Gah, my eyes!" you are screaming. "What the hell is that monstrosity? (Hey, look, there's plushie Cthulhu too.)" I will scoff at you and go, "Well, doesn't everyone have an argyle washcloth?" and you will go "No, because they are sane, you fool woman. Who would knit that... thing when they could be knitting this..."


And I will weep quietly, because you are right. I don't know what came over me. At least I no longer fear intarsia- just some of its results.
The pedantic among you will be wondering "Okay, you've covered the karma and the fear. So where's the optimism, eh?
There it is. Oooh, yeah, baby... six months to go.




Friday, April 9, 2010

Return-Desk Poetry

Okay, Easter week was a terrible time to start a blog. In my defense, though, I have come back after the madness died down! And I'm posting again! For me, this is remarkable.... my Myspace died something like three years ago now, after being thoroughly ignored. (And I have a follower, now, squee! Hello there; I hope I prove sufficiently entertaining.)

And the sad thing is, for all that I've been running around, none of it is particularly bloggable. I mean, I've been working on my knitting, but I haven't entered the project into Ravelry yet, so I'd feel guilty mentioning it here first. I worked out at the gym, got beat up by a toddler, and made custard. Nothing wildly exciting yet... then there is work, at the return desk. Not the most fascinating line of work by anybody's standards; I think the guys building that prototype plasma rocket have got me beat by a fair stretch.

Then- no joke- I found a poem that I'd written at work some time ago. A poem not just written at work, but about work. And not just any poem; a sonnet. I went through a sonnet phase in high school, getting bored with all the "life-is-miserable" free verse going around (I felt it was pretentious; and what, a sonnet wasn't?!! Sigh...) Then, maybe six months ago, I was bored behind the desk. The rest of the mall had closed, but Target was still open for another hour, which meant I had nothing to do. (In case any Target execs are reading this, yes I had already cleaned See Spot Save. Phew.) I wrote a sonnet about my boredom, because this is the sort of thing I do... then I found it crumbled up in one of the eternal piles of paper that randomly sprout around the apartment. (I think they spawn.)

Anyway, for the Internet's reading pleasure (or horror):

"Worry And Repose"

When comes nocturnal end of day, there is
A cobweb film of slumber in the air.
The very rafters seem to drip with bliss;
The world's folk are laundered from their care.

Yet still remains the vapored air of strife
Wrung from the brow to permeate the whole;
It claws at our charisma, joy, and life
To chew and rip a fretful, anguished hole.

Tranquility will fight chaotic scorn
And morph into a bright new entity;
The sunlight will grow watered and forlorn,
And stars will wink in mute serenity.

And in the end, the winner of our will
Is peace, for in our slumber 'tis fulfilled.

.... And if that doesn't have you sobbing from poetic joy (and I won't blame you if it doesn't, that's certainly not my reaction), maybe it'll at least inspire you to remember your receipt please.

(Hey, now that it's on my blog, doesn't that mean it's copyright? Cool... so, um, yeah, copyright 2010 by me [that's Victoria Rothkopf], haha! Sorry, dork moment. I'll be going now.)

Next time: Knitting! And possibly plushie Cthulhu will make a cameo.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Hi There

April Fool's Day seems as good a day as any to create a blog.

Yes, I'm aware that I never fill out my Livejournal anymore, and I keep forgetting to update my Facebook. That's alright... I think deep down, I've wanted just a plain old blog more than anything. Something to babble on, that nobody needs a membership to read, that somebody in this universe might actually read. I know the blog craze seems to ebb and flow like the tide; whatever.

Anyway, I'm Victoria, I'm 24, and I'm a married mom in New Hampshire. And, by the title of this blog, you can guess that I'm... dare I say it, a nerd. I'm a nerd, married to a nerd, and we're growing a little nerdling. My handle on Livejournal and Ravelry is "mamanerd", but I'm willing to bet that's taken, so I took this title instead, today in the car when I decided I was going to write a blog in the first place. Yes, I'm random. Why do you ask?

I started a lot of other things today, too... I cast on a Doctor Who scarf about 45 minutes ago, out of the blue. I've been knitting 17 years now, it's about time. I also started the "couch to 5k" program that I've been meaning to check out, and today at the gym I did the first piece of running that I've done in ooh, two years or so. I've started writing again (if anyone who knows me finds this, yesitsthatstory. Still.) Oh, and let's not forget the giant lace shawl, and all the seedlings all over the kitchen table. (Did I mention that I live in a second-floor apartment, and that my intended "garden" is a concrete slab?) Ah, all the fun of living on a near-constant bipolar high.

The thing is, I actually intend to keep plugging away at these silly, other-nerdly pursuits. (Ooo, title drop. Snazzy.) Maybe, with the entire Internet as a witness, I'll even keep on track with them.... because I've got a list of even more crazy stuff. It beckons. We'll see.